You can't, but you can sell a lot of broadsheets by claiming you have a way, and I don't think Scadrial had any truth-in-advertising laws at this point.

As well, Marsh is not about to go harming innocents, so there's no harm in making such claims.

An extremely strong magnet is how.

That could possibly bring him closer...

No matter the methodology, he'd just reel someone in by Rioting their curiosity (like he did with Marasi) and then Soothing everything they feel so they don't scream/run before he's done (again, like he did with Marasi). Maybe aluminum foil could hinder his ability to make contact.

That, plus some way to make you hard for Harmony to find.

Twinborn

Small question about Twinborn. Compounding works by storing the Feruchemical attribute in a metal (effectively creating a new metal that has that attribute) and then burning that metal to gain more of that attribute than they started with, yes? So , is it therefore possible to work in reverse? For example, could a steel Compounder burn steel, then store that power in a metalmind to draw upon later, or burn for an increased output loop of power?

Word of God has indicated that yes, there is a way to enhance your allomancy with Compounding (and that the Lord Ruler knew and made use of it). Nothing about the specifics of the process.

Source?

I read it on 17th Shard (Sanderson's official fansite). I cannot remember the specific interview which was being quoted, unfortunately. It may have been from Sanderson's Reddit account- he's answered a lot of questions there.

Most likely this can be done by Nicrosil compounding — Nicrosil feruchemy stores "Investiture," which is a term consistently used throughout the Cosmere to refer to power provided by the shards* And the protagonist of the next trilogy is apparently going to be a Nicrosil Misting. Hmmm...

Investiture is just raw magical power, not what you can do with it. But if you knew what metal was appropriate for storage of a particular allomantic power, that would work. We know there's some overlap, allomantic tin increasing all senses and feruchemic tin letting you store particular senses. It's probably based on the metal's correspondences, which means it should just let you store in reverse.

It's also very possible they just haven't discovered which metals would work for this. There are, after all, more than two dozen metals in existence. Things like rubidium, radium, and osmium likely haven't been discovered yet. It's even possible that it would only work with metals that don't exist on Scadrial...

Nicrosil Feruchemy

Nicrosil feruchemy lets you store investiture, and release it later. Does this do anything by itself, or do you need another Allomantic or Feruchemical ability to enhance? The reason I ask is that on other worlds holding investiture seems to have strong effects in and of itself. In Warbreaker holding biochroma causes some effects specific to the magic system (discernment of colors, instinctive awakening, enhancing color around you) but also causes increased mental and physical health to the eventual point of immortality. Similarly, in The Stormlight Archive anyone infused with Stormlight can power the abilities granted by their spren, but also get healing and physical enhancement. In fact, they are like the Returned from Warbreaker in that they heal back to their image of themselves (which is why Kalladin's brands stay when it can even heal missing arms back). Elantrians do more or less the same thing, once the transformation that lets them be flooded with investituture from the city of Elantris is complete. There seems to be a pattern here.

Normally allomancers, feruchemists, and hemalurgists don't really store investiture. They just sort of use it at arm's length. So maybe that's exactly what a nicrosil feruchemist can do. And once they meet other worlds they'll be able to use it to power other magic systems more, while when they're alone they'll just feel like it's a really expensive form of gold. Speaking of which, nicrosil is pretty expensive, so this isn't exactly going to be common.

Not just gold, though, if this is what it does. You get physical enhancement like a weak version of pewter, and apparently mental health in addition to physical (since the Returned are apparently unable to go insane) which overlaps with other abilities. Since all living things have some innate investiture anyway, it seems the easiest way to read it would be an ability to store and then release LifeForce. Which, given how broad the effects seem to be (even if they're weaker than the pure metals), is actually pretty darn overpowered.

Also, in interaction with other magic systems, at the very least a Radiant with this power would hold stormlight perfectly and in arbitrary quantities. Which is a really scary thought.

Well, it's repeatedly implied that a Radiant who has sworn all his Oaths can hold Stormlight perfectly, so that would just be a little bit of cheating the system. Remember, Surgebinding relies less on pure power as on skill, amount of Stormlight available, and the strength of the bond (which modulates efficiency, which brings us back to point number two). It's why the Heralds were so scarily powerful, despite (Stormlight spoilers) Honorblades actually being less effective than Radiant bonds.

I suppose. But it still removes a few key limitations like the length of time you can be 'powered up', and lets you carry Stormlight around without glowing (which was a problem for Kaladin in the second book). So I suppose it's most dangerous in the hands of a radiant who is also a spy, because even if someone removes all spheres and searches them they can still be carrying as much power as they need. It might also give some protection from having your stormlight drained. And then there's more speculative possibilities, like the fabrials you could make if the metal is infused with stormlight.

The Mistborn RPG explains this: Nicrosil lets you mix and match your metals, so you can for example store weight and then use it to gain health. That's a pretty huge gamebreaker, but it only works on metals you actually have, so for ferrings it's useless. However, you can also use it to create "bursts" of Investiture to disrupt enemy metalminds like an EMP. So it's Anti-Magic, but coming from a different direction than aluminum and related abilities.

The Bands Of Mourning has been released, and with it comes a shocking revelation about Nicrosil feruchemy (that differs from and I believe supersedes the version told in the Mistborn Adventure Game); you can store your ability to use a type of investiture into a nicromind for later use. Underwhelming on its own, especially for Nicrosil Ferrings and Twinborn, it quickly becomes broken when coupled with Aluminum Feruchemy, which allows you to "jailbreak" your metalminds, leaving them wide open for anyone to use. In this way, the feruchemist in question can bestow their stores (and, if they have it, their Allomancy) upon others without resorting to Hemalurgy. This is the basis of the titular Bands of Mourning, which first embue Marasi, then Wax with phenomenal power befitting a Mistborn who is also a Full Feruchemist.

The canonicity of the RPG is a bit unclear, but the two uses are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Mixing and matching your metals only works if you have multiple metals, so no one in the modern world would have figured it out yet.

It comes up rarely but Vin and Wax have both noted feeling sometimes empowered or restored by the mists. It's weaker, but still sounds a lot like the side effects of holding stormlight or extra biochroma, and may be part of Preservation's investiture. As for Hemalurgists and Feruchemists, either none have been narrators long enough to reveal their side-benefits, or they may not get any. After all, stormlight and biochroma and the Dor involve taking in power from another source and getting the side benefits while holding and using it. Feruchemists don't take any power in from elsewhere, and Hemalurgy just happens to whoever has been spiked, it's not something they willfully use. Meanwhile Sel (Elantris) also has Forgers, who use another form of the Dor that also doesn't seem to grant any investiture side benefits. But how Forging works has some notable similarities to how Allik describes the duralumin (Connection) metalmind enables him to speak the language of the Basin. In other words, an investiture may require actively taking in and using some external power to gain those invigorating side-effects, and any different method won't.

Pulser and Slider Interaction

Just a point of clarification, we know the powers cancel each other out in a general sense. But a pulser has a much larger area of effect than a slider. Would a slider standing in the middle of a pulser field neutralize the entire thing, or only their bubble? Because if you make a ring of slow time surrounding a pocket of normal, Wayne and Marasi have an amazing combo attack up their sleeve.

Incidentally, this may be the basis of Scadrian FTL travel, which we know is possible by Word of Brandon.

Hiding from Harmony

Assuming one wanted to stay hidden from Harmony and his servants like Bleeder did, and didn't have access to a foreign Shard to screen you, what would you do? Some thoughts occur to me but there are probably better ones. 1) Hang out in the most developed parts of cities, where metal is common. This will become more and more true as electrification becomes ubiquitous and cars are constantly on the move. Cars, trains, etc are all excellent places for meetings. 2) Wear aluminum, to protect from emotional influence. 3) Make major decisions in consultation with someone burning Electrum, since the uncertainty they create in the future will extend to your interactions with them. Does anyone else have any ideas?

Wayne and Steris

What's with Wayne's hostility towards Steris? I can get him not liking her, but in book two, he says that she repulses him and then walks off (in response to her asking why he hates her). Even when he's being rude he tends to do it in an irreverent way, so what makes Steris so awful that he's just come out and say that?

It seems to me that it's nothing to do with her and everything to do with the fact that he doesn't want Wax to marry her. Or anyone really, but especially a city girl.

It's more that Wayne wants Wax to marry Marasi, or somebody whose actually fitting for him. Wayne is perceptive enough to see that Wax is only interested in Steris because she doesn't require the emotional investment that he is still to broken up to be capable of. Wax is attempting to give up on love by marrying Steris, and Wayne doesn't want that for his best friend.

I dunno about the thought that Steris isn't fitting for Wax; while that may have been true in Alloy of Law, by the train scene in Bands of Mourning I'd say they had really fallen for each other. Wayne continues to be a jerk, but Wax does eventually tell him enough is enough.

Harmony and Hemalurgy

So Harmony doesn't really like Hemalurgy; he makes use of various Hemalurgic servants and implements, sure, but Hero of Ages mentions that it disgusts him, and Bands of Mourning shows through Spook's book that he's tried his best to keep knowledge of it away from the general populace. But the thing is, he has the power of Ruin, who created Hemalurgy in the first place - so why doesn't he just change how Hemalurgy works, or remove it altogether? Sure, it's true that a good chunk of Ruin's power has been invested into Scadrial (Arcanum Unbound suggests that Ruin and Preservation created Scadrial from scratch), but Harmony doesn't necessarily need to be as powerful as an uninvested Ruin to just tweak it - it likely wouldn't be hard to deliberately break it by messing with it a bit, or at least just change its power source to something else. As for the Hemalurgic beings, he'd just need to change them a bit so that they'd still be around (he canonically did so with both humanity and koloss when he ascended, so he could presumably do the same to kandra and Marsh).

Koloss Blooded

The Elite Mook in The Alloy of Law is said to be Koloss-Blooded, implying he is of partial Koloss heritage. The issue is that The Hero of Ages made it clear that Koloss are crafted using Hemalurgy and don't sexually reproduce...which begs the question of how someone can be of Koloss heritage. The term is never explained in depth, making it unlikely it means something else.

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